The month of May has seen me sharing my spreads for each day. I’ve really enjoyed sharing these pages as well as reflecting on the practice of visual journaling.
It is no lie. This is what I do everyday, to check in with myself, to start my day, to get my head on straight. It’s my gift to self, as it makes me slow down and savour the morning, the moment, the connection with self.
Visual Journal 31/05
It makes me my priority, each and everyday. And of course not everyday is all light and unicorns. All emotions find their way onto the page. But this is the beauty of the practice. It provides me with the means to be fully human.
Please consider trying this practice for yourself. If you’ve got any questions or concerns just get in touch and I’d be happy to help.
I’ve been living with this project for about five years now; whenever I’m near the sea, or any body of water, taking a moment to breathe it in and then capturing 10 seconds of it.
I’m not even sure where the idea came from or why 10 seconds. But I know I have thousands of these little films.
To go through them all and post them online seemed a daunting task. But I know how much joy being with the sea brings me and I’m always trying to find ways to share this joy.
So to make it happen, to make this project happen, I’ve taken 2022 as my year to share, The Healing Properties of the Seas, 2022.
The task is simple. Share 10 second videos I create in 2022 of bodies of water I see, visit, get close to, get into.
You’ll find some clips in blog posts but hopefully all of them in the portfolio. Enjoy.
Every year for the past 6 or 7 years, I’m chosen a word to guide me through the year. A word that I can use almost as a beacon to lead me through the year ahead with purpose, focus and grace.
2021 saw we embracing the practice of ::SLOW:: after 2020 and pandemic forcing everyone to slow down. Once things started to open up again, to some degrees, I didn’t want to give up the space and creativity and peace I’d found in moving and being at a slower pace. So I purposely leant into slow in 2021, and it saw me well.
Each guiding word is not discarded at the end of each year but through practice they become incorporated, embedded really into my way of being moving forward. So 2022, will see me continue to practice ::SLOW:: because I have learned so much about myself and others through it’s adoption. It has changed the way I operate in this world and for the better.
So considering this, the natural progression for me, building on 2021, is to adopt {BE} OPEN as my word of 2022.
For me OPEN means being open to opportunities, vulnerabilities and ideas.
Using OPEN with {BE} is a reminder to go gently and with grace. Using {} around the word ‘be’ is giving me, my state of being a virtual hug. I’m hugging myself through this process of opening up more to opportunities, vulnerabilities and ideas.
{BE} is offering love to myself. {BE} OPEN is offering action to open, even though I know ‘being’ has nothing to do with ‘doing’. Being is just being, just being me. No need to produce or shine. Just be simply open to what is there right in front of me.
{BE} OPEN to opportunities is not to shut down straight away but to move out of my comfort zone if something is offered to me as a possibility.
{BE} OPEN to vulnerabilities is being more of an open book. Showing up more and more authentically me and not being afraid of sharing my emotions, feelings and thoughts. Having my honest heart on display and giving and accepting LOVE.
{BE} OPEN to ideas is continuing to be the life-long learner I’m accepted myself to be and to continue to play and experiment within my own practice. To remain open to new adventures and explorations and not be afraid to take leaps, even when I’m getting older and maybe stuck in my ways.
With 2022, I’m practicing how to keep an open mind, heart and soul to whatever comes next. Viewing being and developing myself not as a chore or battle but as a blessing.
Other events offered as an alternative to the Future Landscape Programme that will run at the same tine at COP26 in Glasgow, will provide diverse voices to the environmental and conservation movement and makes those all important links between the local and global in terms of the climate crisis.
I’ll be hosting a conversation with Sarah Hussain and Serayna Solanki
Through their projects and research, both Sarah Hussain and Serayna Solanki are providing spaces for marginalised communities and people of colour to engage with nature as a means of changing the narrative around who has a say in the Climate Change Movement. They are working within education and research, community and organisational partnerships, to create and highlight dialogue around climate justice through personal and community storytelling.
Join me , as host again, with Jo Clement and Zakiya McKenzie for a reading and discussion of literature which explores place, environment, belonging and identity as both writers read from and talk about their recent collections.
Grace Hull created Green Grace Soul to share her journey to living sustainably in a holistic way. Grace attempts to balance the food she eats, the products she uses and the things she buys with the most beneficial outcomes for her health, the health of the planet, and the others living on it.
Sustainable living and Climate Change activism have many faces, and by centring holistic sustainability Grace engages with intersectionality and the social and historical context of climate change through the reflections of her journey that she shares on her website, podcast and DIY projects.
This will be a keynote lecture followed by a Q and A.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.
I know I’m not alone in stating that 2020 really kicked us in the nuts. It was a year from hell in so many ways, and not what was expected or wanted. But it also was a year of great change and realisation for myself. It was tough but there were also good things to come out of the chaos. One thing that I carry with me into the New Year is the practice of slow.
Whether we wanted to, or liked to, or not, 2020 made us all slow down. Being locked down, in the UK, for the most of the year, I got into a routine and practice of slowing down and being satisfied by achieving less and less each day, each week, each month. Consequently, being more in touch with my life moment to moment. I had to be more present within my life on a day to day basis as that’s all I had to occupy my attention. How I moved through my day, what I did, or ate. Who I talked to or not, who I spent time with or not, was all magnified to huge proportions, that I came to appreciate what I had and didn’t have within my life.
Slowing down was my way of living to the full within the restrictions and limitations. To the point that when the restrictions were eased, when there were more opportunities to re-engage with society, at the back end of 2020, before we went back into a lockdown, and the tiers were introduced, I chose to remain in this slowed down pace way of living. People were rushing and frantically trying to get back to ‘normal’, trying to catch up for the time they felt was lost and wasted during lockdown, but for me this time at home was time gifted. Time I used to go within and really work on myself.
Slowing down is a gift and a privilege which I’m not rushing to give up as we enter 2021. I’m going to use the word ‘slow’ as my guiding word for the year as an anchor to continue exploring what my life can become when I chose to go, to work, to be at my own pace. I intend to work out on a day to day basis what it means to slow down rather than work or perform at someone else’s urgent-got-to-be-completed-yesterday demands.
Slowing down is empowering as it means I’m taking back control of how I operate within this world. I’m not going to make demands on other people’s time or energy as if it’s totally necessary as I don’t know their story. I don’t know what other pressures they’re carrying at this time, so I don’t want to add to their burden with my time-sensitive demands. I hope through practicing this for myself and with others that other people will offer the same gesture to me. To allow me to move and be at my own pace, a much slower pace. Things will be done and completed all in good time.
I want to bring about change to what is valued within society, Western society in particular, where productivity and demonstrating our busyness is seen as admirable and something we should all constantly strive for. Rather than being slower, slowing down to savour the moments, and being more focused at the same time. Slow is not lazy or backwards or to be dismissed. Slow is simple and calming and nourishing.
I look forward to this year and exploring the art of slow/ slowness/ slowed down living and being.
Living Wild Studios 